I have another idea to float: Advocates have the opportunity to refer a designer, author, marketing person, dev, etc. We personally reach out to them with a tailored email invitation. (We'd pre-write a few of these, one for each area of the project.) The email would outline what we do, and then go into a few details about the a certain area of contribution, with pointers to resources for getting started, etc.
If the person starts contributing, the person who referred them is awarded with points. If we eventually elect that person, the person who referred them gets more points. (I believe this is directly analogous to how client referrals typically work on the platform.) Contributions are the capital of OSS. People's time and attention is our most important resource. So here's the analogy: Traditional referrals program: - Advocates refer individuals who "convert" by paying (contributing) money. OSS referrals program: - Advocates refer individuals who "convert" by paying (contributing) time. I don't think many people explicitly think about OSS in these terms. But when you do, a lot of things become clear. For example: recruitment should be your number one priority! Recruitment is your sales channel, effectively. "Sales channel" makes sense if you see time and attention as a sort of currency. Most people think that the measure of health for an OSS project is how many downloads you have, or how many users you have. That's because in a business, these things translate to revenue. And revenue is your lifeblood But if time and attention are the capital of OSS, then contributions are your lifeblood. And it seems likely that traditional business practices used to maximise revenue might be applicable to maximising contribution. If we did something like this, would we be the first OSS project to actively reach out to people to invite them to contribute? Inviting speakers (usually from pools) is a very effective way of increasing speaker diversity at a conference. (Citations available upon request.) Perhaps invitation is one of the ways we can increase our project diversity? On 6 June 2014 18:47, Jan Lehnardt <[email protected]> wrote: > just to note that I’d be equally happy with disabling it. > > On 06 Jun 2014, at 17:49 , Joan Touzet <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Sounds like an impedance mismatch. Disable the functionality. >> >> It'd be nice to know how people get to our community, and it's good >> to have a consultancy network, but this really sounds more like a >> support function for channel partnerships and revenue recognition -- >> "virtual finders fees" as it were. Not sure if we need that. >> >> -Joan >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Noah Slater" <[email protected]> >> To: "Noah Slater" <[email protected]> >> Cc: [email protected], "Benoit Chesneau" <[email protected]>, >> "Dave Cottlehuber" <[email protected]>, "Jan L" <[email protected]> >> Sent: Friday, June 6, 2014 8:11:00 AM >> Subject: Re: CouchDB referrals? >> >> I am particularly interested in the opinions of: >> >> - PMC members (from a governance perspective) >> - Marketing people (from a recruitment/community perspective) >> - People who offer CouchDB consulting (Jan, Dave, Benoit, etc.) >> >> On 4 June 2014 15:57, Noah Slater <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Hello folks, >>> >>> The Influitive AdvocateHub has a primary concept of a referral. In the >>> context of a business, a referral is when an advocate refers a contact >>> to the business. Obviously, this is very valuable for B2B business >>> that are looking for clients. >>> >>> CouchDB is not a B2B business, and so I'm not sure this particular >>> part of the AdvocateHub fits our use case. >>> >>> We can turn it off. But before we do, I wanted to explore some other >>> options. What could referrals mean for us, as a community? >>> >>> Some ideas: >>> >>> - A referral is just an advocate recommending CouchDB to a friend or >>> colleague. In this scenario, who does the referral contact? Do we put >>> them in touch with a mailing list (seems a little odd), a particular >>> person, or particular persons? >>> >>> - A referral is more about contributors than it is about users. So the >>> advocate would be referring a contributor to the CouchDB project. >>> Perhaps a designer, a marketing person, a video blogger, a technical >>> author, or whatever. People we find hard to recruit normally. >>> (Remember that recruitment is our #1 biggest challenge.) >>> >>> - A referral is a business referral. We set up a list for people who >>> offer CouchDB services. A referral puts the a person in contact with >>> this list of people. So tenders can be made individually by whomever >>> is interested in the business. >>> >>> Thoughts? >>> >>> Thanks, >>> >>> -- >>> Noah Slater >>> https://twitter.com/nslater >> >> >> >> -- >> Noah Slater >> https://twitter.com/nslater > -- Noah Slater https://twitter.com/nslater
